大象传媒

Your daily journey into global arts, culture and entertainment, with Harriett Gilbert and Mark Coles.

Whoopi Goldberg is one of the elite group of artists who have won a Grammy, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, an Emmy and a Tony.
She is now co-producing a musical version of her 1992 hit film "Sister Act" and she explains to The Strand the appeal of this story for her as well as looking back over her award winning career.

SISTER ACT" opens at the London Palladium on 2 June, following previews from 7 May.

Letlhogile Lucas reports from Botswana's Maitisong Festival -- a free outdoor-programme of music, dance and theatre that for-one-week takes-over the city. This year, a highlight was a theatrical production called called The Flower which combined song, dance and drama to address some pressing social issues -- crucially, the growing problem-in-Botswana of domestic violence. Under customary law and in common rural practice, men have the right to-in-quotes "chastise" their wives. But what effect can a theatre performance have on people's thinking and behaviour?

Nawal El Saadawi, the internationally renowned writer and feminist, joins The Strand to talk about two of her most recently published plays: God Resigns at the Summit Meeting and Isis. Never one to shy away from potentially controversial subjects, the first resulted in El Saadawi being charged with "insulting Islam" and all original Arabic copies of the play being destroyed. The second is a critique of the discriminatory rules that control women in North Africa and the Middle East today.